


a house by the sea

by mistyheartrbs



Category: Love Live! Sunshine!!
Genre: F/F, Fluff and Angst, Sleepovers, extremely vague references to the great gatsby
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-08
Updated: 2017-10-08
Packaged: 2019-01-10 16:36:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12303177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mistyheartrbs/pseuds/mistyheartrbs
Summary: Kanan finds Mari sitting by the dock.





	a house by the sea

**Author's Note:**

> season two has started and so begins my repeated descent into idol hell

"I loved it here," Mari breathed, letting the salty smell of the sea fill her lungs until there was nothing else left, trailing her fingers through the water. There was nobody else there, just her, and that was fine. 

It was fine, even if she was a bit cold. 

It wasn't fine, not really, but it would have been selfish to call someone over just to sit with her on a dock at night, reminiscing. She hated to think of herself as someone selfish. 

"Mari!" Kanan's voice rang out, distorted by the heavy crashing of the waves, and for a moment she thought she'd just imagined it until Kanan all but plucked her off from the edge. "I've been looking everywhere for you - what were you even _doing_ here? It's dangerous! What is this - you're wearing a _dress?_ In late fall? Just as you're about to fall into the water? You're asking for trouble!" Pinching the bridge of her nose, Kanan reluctantly sat down next to her. "God, what am I going to do with you?" 

"Kanan?" 

"You leave for . . . for _two years,_ and now you're back, and it should be fine, right?" Kanan tipped her head back, staring up at the clear, starry sky. Mari thought idly about how much easier it was to see the stars here, rather than back in America. They'd always been clouded by pollution or storms or something like that. Uchiura's skies always had that surreal quality to them, like you were walking in a dream. "Except it's not. The school's closing and we're graduating and where's that going to leave us? The same place as we were two years ago?" Kanan trembled by the end of her sentence, voice cracking at _ago._

"Hey, I'm supposed to be the dramatic one, _silly,"_ Mari murmured, but the reassurance in her words fell flat. 

"We only have a few months left! Doesn't that mean anything to you?" 

"Of course it does, Kanan!" Mari stood up, ignoring the tremor in her legs - they'd fallen asleep sometime around eight. Kanan's eyes widened, and Mari tried not to think about how they looked like the sea itself, so vast and blue, so gentle and powerful. Romance writers would call her feelings overblown. Then, softer, she continued. "I wrote you letters every day, you know. When I was in America? I never sent them, _obviously,_ I burned most of them, but I thought about you." 

"You wrote letters?" 

"I used to look up at the stars - the ones I could see, anyway - and pretend you were an ocean away, looking at the same ones." She paused, wringing her hands together. Kanan was silent. "It made you feel . . . ah, geez, this is ridiculous, isn't it? It made you feel closer. Like, if I could just reach out and touch that light, you'd . . ." She didn't finish - couldn't finish. "You're here, now. We're not so far apart, are we, Kanan?" Mari sat back down, and Kanan leaned in closer to her. "We don't need the stars." 

"You're a loon," Kanan teased, elbowing Mari playfully. It took her a moment to notice that Mari's balance was a little off-kilter, and she wobbled at the edge of the dock. "It's like you're talking from some old nov-" A loud _splash!_ interrupted her, and hardly a second had passed before Mari's head surfaced above the water, gasping for air. "Mari!" With one quick movement, Kanan dove in and grabbed her by the arm, dragging her back to the surface. Mari flopped onto the wood of the dock looking like a dying fish, her hair falling in front of her eyes and her shirt soaked through. 

_"Whoops,"_ Mari weakly forced out, in English. "My sweet knight came to save me from the depths of the swirling ocean." 

"You _still_ can't swim?" 

"I guess not." 

"First thing tomorrow, I'm teaching you. It's a safety hazard." 

"Okay, _Grandma."_ Mari's words would have had more of a bite to them if she wasn't shivering. 

"Let's get you inside, okay? We're both going to catch pneumonia at this rate." 

***

Kanan was, most strongly, struck by just how _big_ Mari's house was. She'd been there before, of course - for play dates and study dates and things she wished would just be _dates_ \- but rarely had she ever been there this late at night, with both of them dripping water on carpets that were probably worth more than Uranohoshi's entire campus. Most of the lights were off, save for a few lamps lit for "dramatic effect," as Mari put it. 

"I can't see, could you turn on . . . something?" 

"Why, of course!" Mari clapped twice, and the room erupted into clear, cold light, with a surprisingly small amount of furniture crowding the rooms. It looked lonely, Kanan thought with a pang. Vast and empty. 

"Hey, uh, why don't we go to your room? You have . . . clothes there, right?" Mari regarded her strangely. 

"Are you alright, Kanan?" 

"I'm fine! I was just thinking, it's warmer in there, and we're both soaking wet-" Mari raised her eyebrows with a grin. "-I just think that it's better to go up there." 

"Alright." The pair walked up Mari's grand staircase without another word between them until the wooden door creaked open and revealed the bedroom Kanan had spent so many hours lounging in, playing in, watching the beautiful ocean on that balcony. It had hardly changed since then - pink walls, a pile of seal plushies stacked in a pyramid like they were trying to make some kind of cheerleading formation. Soft sheets lined the massive bed. 

"Is it okay if I . . . ?" Kanan pointed to the bed as Mari dug through her drawers. 

"Yep." The bed creaked under her. "Is this okay?" Mari picked up a sweater. 

"You really don't need to-" 

"Kanan, you plunged in there like some _cool action hero_ to save me, I won't let you catch a cold because of my hubris!" Mari held out the sweater with one hand while the other clenched her heart. Kanan tried to hold back a chuckle, but Mari kept holding the pose, still as a statue, and soon she burst out laughing. 

"Okay, okay, I'll take it!" she sighed, wiping a stray tear from her eye. "Where's the bathroom?" 

"Down the hall." Kanan hurried in the direction of Mari's finger, skidding down the smooth hallways as she did so. 

"Hey, Mari?" Mari poked her head out of the room, one leg already stuck through a pair of sweatpants. 

"Hmm?" 

"Do you live here alone?" 

"Pretty much. The housekeepers come here sometimes, to check on me, but otherwise I'm _okay!"_ Mari winked and gave her a thumbs-up before disappearing back into the bedroom. Kanan ducked into the bathroom and changed into the sweater as quickly as humanly possible, wadding her damp clothes into a ball and heading back to Mari. 

"You don't get lonely?" she murmured, leaning on the doorframe. Mari looked up at her from the floor. 

"How could I?" It was a false grin, insincere, but Kanan didn't push her on it. "I have you and Dia-san and the rest of Aqours! How could anyone ever be lonely like that?" 

"Right." Kanan pulled her legs close to her chest, and Mari didn't quite meet her gaze. "Hey, what do you say about a . . . a sort of impromptu sleepover? I can call my parents - the buses aren't running right now anyway, and it's not really safe to walk home, and-" 

"I'd love that, Kanan." 

***

Kanan was cute when she slept, Mari thought. She'd managed to drag a mattress from one of the unused guest rooms and had fallen asleep nearly instantly, but sleep did not come so easily to Mari.

"I was a bit of a fool, wasn't I?" she said, softly, so as not to wake her. "We both were." The ocean still crashed outside. "We should run away together, Kanan. Just you and I, somewhere far away." Kanan's chest rose and fell with her soft snores. "Then again, whenever people try to run away in love stories, they die. Maybe we should just stay here, hmm?" At the other end of the room, Kanan blinked back tears, but Mari couldn't see that in the dark. "Yeah, I think we can stay here."

**Author's Note:**

> "i don't want mari to suffer," i say as i write fics in which mari suffers


End file.
